No clear winner yet after polls close in Israeli elections: Exit polls

LONDON -- Polling stations opened in Israel on Tuesday morning for a pivotal general election that is expected to be a tight race between the parties led by incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot.

Tuesday's election is the first time Israelis will vote since the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and subsequent war in Gaza, as well as since the joint U.S.-Israeli 12-day war on Iran in 2025 and the ongoing U.S.-Israeli campaign against Tehran which was launched in February.

Voting ends at 10 p.m. local time -- 4 p.m. ET -- after which exit polls are expected to give an indication of who is in the lead. But final results are not expected until Wednesday afternoon, with horse trading likely to begin immediately as the two leaders seek deals with smaller parties to build a coalition capable of wielding a parliamentary majority.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog will then consult with party leaders and offer the chance to form a government to the leader he believes has the best chance of forming a government, usually the leader of the largest party. Netanyahu will remain caretaker prime minister while negotiations -- which can last for several weeks -- go on.

The election is being dominated by foreign policy and security issues, with Israeli forces still embroiled in conflicts on multiple fronts -- in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and the occupied West Bank -- and with little indication that any will soon be concluded.

Netanyahu, the leader of the right-wing Likud party which heads the governing coalition, is a totemic figure in Israeli politics and the longest serving prime minister in the country's history.

First elected prime minister in 1996, Netanyahu held the office for 12 consecutive years between 2009 and 2021. He returned to office in 2022 despite facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel -- in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed -- and the subsequent war in Gaza, which to date has killed at least 74,555 people in the coastal Palestinian exclave according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, have proven defining chapters in Netanyahu's decades-long political career. The vast human toll and destruction of the ongoing Israeli operation in Gaza has provoked vociferous criticism from abroad.

Lebanese Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia and part of Tehran's "Axis of Resistance," launched attacks on Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in support of Hamas, and subsequently continued cross-border fire toward Israeli territory. In response, Netanyahu oversaw an extensive Israeli campaign against the group.

Israeli operations in Lebanon killed Hezbollah's longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah and saw Beirut -- and particularly Hezbollah strongholds in the south of the city -- and the south of the country put under fierce and sustained bombardment. Later came an Israeli ground operation that seized swaths of territory in border areas.

In Syria, too, Netanyahu ordered the IDF to occupy positions in the south of the country in response to the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad, who was toppled by a patchwork of rebel groups led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the man later appointed as the country's new leader.

In June 2025, Netanyahu ordered an attack on Iranian military and nuclear facilities, a campaign later joined by American forces in what became known as the 12-day war. Then, in February, the U.S. and Israel launched another joint campaign against Iran which began with a massive airstrike campaign killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many top Iranian commanders and officials.

These regional conflicts have come to define Netanyahu's latest term in office, and the incumbent -- who has previously framed himself as "Mr. Security" -- has leaned heavily on his security credentials during the campaign for Tuesday's vote.

"Israel's enemies only want us to lose," Netanyahu wrote on X this week, framing the opposition bloc as "dangerous" and "left-wing."

The prime minister has also consistently railed against the parliament's Arab-Israeli parties that represent some 2.1 million Arab-Israelis -- around one fifth of the country's population. Netanyahu and his supporters have repeatedly cast them as fifth-column threats to national security. A common slogan used by the Netanyahu campaign is, "The Right or Palestine."

Netanyahu also posted an image to X this week seemingly depicting a potential nuclear strike on Tel Aviv, suggesting that only he could lead Israel against the "tangible existential danger" of an Iranian nuclear arsenal. Tehran has long denied any ambition to build nuclear weapons.

Eisenkot -- who heads the centrist Yashar party -- and the rest of the Israeli opposition have framed Netanyahu as having failed to ensure national security, first in failing to prevent the Oct. 7 attack and subsequently in failing to achieve key Israeli war goals, chief among them the dismantling of Hamas in Gaza and the defeat of Iran.

Domestically, Israel is grappling with a debate over military exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox community, plus long-time concerns over the charges facing Netanyahu and controversial judicial reforms the prime minister backed that sparked nationwide protests in 2023.

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The scars of the Oct. 7 attack have been keenly visible in the campaign. Some opposition figures and voters have expressed anger at Netanyahu's refusal to set up a state commission of inquiry into the failures associated with the attack.

Netanyahu's government, which analysts have described as the most right-wing in the nation's history, has also faced fierce international criticism for the deteriorating situation in the occupied West Bank and for its repeated denunciation of the two-state solution.

The Palestinian territory has seen a significant expansion of Israeli settlements -- considered illegal under international law -- and displacement of Palestinian communities since 2023, with far-right government figures like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir openly advocating for more extreme measures against Palestinians.

Arab-Israeli leaders have urged a record turnout by their voters in response to the government's conduct in Gaza and the West Bank. Ahmad Tibi, a member of parliament and the leader of the Ta'al party, said this week that he was "determined to do everything to bring down this government."

"Tomorrow the Arabs will flock to the polling stations and send the destruction government packing," he wrote in a post to X on Monday.

Opposition figures have appealed to voters to deliver an unmistakable electoral rebuke to Netanyahu, suggesting that the veteran political operator will fight tooth and nail to retain office.

At his final campaign rally on Monday, Eisenkot told supporters that Netanyahu would "stop at nothing -- no lie, no extreme measure -- to stay in power." He added, "Anyone who thinks our Israel can survive another four years like these is living under a dangerous misconception."

But like the current government, Eisenkot and his bloc support continued military pressure on Iran, its allies Hezbollah in Lebanon, Tehran-aligned militias in Iraq and the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.

In Gaza too, Eisenkot said he has no plans for an Israel retreat, calling for Hamas to be eliminated and for the Israel Defense Forces to retain a presence in the devastated Palestinian territory.

In the West Bank, Eisenkot has been more critical of the Israeli settler groups who have driven escalating violence against Palestinian communities. Netanyahu's government has been criticized by the opposition for failing to crack down on settler groups.

Eisenkot said he would use the Israeli military to rein in those settlers and crack down on their violence.

The closing days of the campaign were dominated by reports of a growing rift between Netanyahu and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, with reports in the Israeli press suggesting the tensions arose from Netanyahu pushing for the resumption of military strikes on Iran on the eve of the election.

On Monday, Netanyahu denied the reports as "another piece of fake news." He wrote in a post to X that he had "no intention" of removing Zamir from his post. "I do intend to permanently remove the Iranian nuclear threat. I will do so together with my friend President [Donald] Trump, and we will also sign peace agreements with additional countries."

Despite some periods of reported tension between them, Trump and Netanyahu appear to have retained a close relationship. The U.S. president this week again endorsed Netanyahu for re-election.

"As everyone is aware, including the enemy, Bibi and I have had a great relationship in winning together," Trump said in a post to his social media platform, touting the joint U.S.-Israel operations against Iran in 2025 and 2026.

"When you go to the Polls please remember that Bibi has been an outstanding Warrior Prime Minister! Israel was called The Little Satan, with the United States being called The Big Satan, by some very evil people. There can no longer be the chant heard around the World of "Death to America, Death to Israel," and there won't be," Trump wrote.

"Vote for Bibi Netanyahu for Prime Minister, we have to finish the job that we started!" he added.

In another social media post earlier this month, Trump suggested he would not be able to work with Israel to "finish the job" in Iran "If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi."

ABC News' Matt Rivers, Jordana Miller, Guy Davies and Colm O'Molloy contributed to this report.